The sun is already high. Seven o’clock in the morning has just struck when, at the service station, a man gets out of a van, euphoric. He swoops down on the first woman in sight, introduces himself with ceremony : “Carlinhos Raimundo de Auxiliadora.” And he continues: “You have a husband ?” He reeks of alcohol and waves a 200 reais (31 euros) note – you don’t see much of that in Brazil.
At the height of joy, he looks for company to celebrate this tidy sum that has just earned him a job, but also something else. “It happens to me a great happiness, I was finally able to buy a plot!” To those who tell him not to flaunt his money so much, he replies with a laugh, and in western cowboy mode: “Me ! With my .38 caliber on my belt!” With his shirt loose over his jeans, it’s impossible to know if he’s really armed.
Welcome to Realidade, the promised land of System D followers and the poor. And this gas station is the first you come across on the first 600 kilometers, from north to south, from the BR-319, the most controversial road in the Amazon.
President Jair Bolsonaro has made a big promise to the inhabitants of the region, one of the poorest in Brazil: to complete the asphalting of this major axis. A strategic necessity for the development of the local economy, he believes. Browse the BR-319 in its entirety, from Manaus, capital of the State of Amazonas, to Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia, further south, allows us to observe with the naked eye the effects produced by the influx of settlers, attracted by the beautiful promises and the land at a good price. Deforestation is progressing at full speed.
Rivers and swamps
On the map, the BR-319 is just a very thin line. Seen from a drone, it’s an ocher straight lost in an ocean of greenery, of broccoli, one would say. All those interested in the largest rainforest on the planet are watching this Amazonian axis carefully: the outcome of this project will determine whether the most preserved part of the forest continues to protect biodiversity and capture the CO2. And given the role of temperature regulators that these vast jungles play, this will have repercussions for the entire globe.
Along unpaved streets whose earth regularly turns into slush, the village of Realidade lines up bars and motels, trucks, workshops, evangelical temples and wooden houses. The municipality has recently grown to the point of being equipped with a school and a health center, a growth that it owes to these lucrative activities which attract Brazilians from all over the country, and which are decimating the forest: cutting illegal timber, animal husbandry, soybean fields.
Here, the law is a distant and very malleable concept. In this region, where tensions are always high, the law of the accomplished fact prevails and distrust of the overly curious foreigner. You don’t come to the area by chance or as a tourist, you come with an idea in mind. Everyone is constantly on the alert. And there isn’t a policeman for hundreds of miles around.
The inhabitants have been waiting for the asphalting of the road for decades, convinced that with it will come prosperity. For scientists and ecologists, it would be a nightmare: they fear that the monster they saw growing up in Realidade will come back up the road to make babies.
The 887 kilometers of BR-319 cross one of the best preserved parts of this forest which covers half of Brazil, the equivalent of the area of the European Union. An area of rivers and swamps. Half the year the road turns into a quagmire. We pass farms with evocative names – Grande Espérance, Riche Terre, God gave me.
Dona Mocinha is particularly involved in this fight for asphalting. She has a hostel at 260 km, huge glasses and energy to spare – at 64, she takes evening classes. She has lived for several decades in Igapó Açu, a village built on stilts due to regular flooding. “There was a time when, from November to May [la saison des pluies]nobody passed by here, nobody!” She observes from her porch a more regular traffic of trucks and 4×4:
They say the paved road will have a big ecological footprint, but frankly, what footprint? I’m not a biologist, but the biggest footprint was when it was built.”
It was in the 1970s, under the dictatorship. A titanic project in this marshy region and therefore fertile and teeming with biodiversity. “Crimsoned by streams where fish, crocodiles and mosquitoes abound”, Precise Rómulo Batista, from Greenpeace.
Pressure and death threats
Even the sympathetic Dona Mocinha, who belongs to the Association of Friends and Defenders of BR-319, is well aware q